Boy, howdy; Nissan Titan sales aren’t doing too well. With a rumbly base V8, a couch-comfy cabin, and impressive standard safety features, what’s not to like? Dead last in the pickup truck segment, however, the Titan is all but ensuring its presumed-to-be-soon discontinuation date. It’s now being outsold by some rather interesting models, like this Italian-designed, Turkish-built work van.

How many Nissan Titans were sold in 2022?

Let’s make a disclaimer here. Pickup truck unit production is often inflated because of fleet sales. The percentage fluctuates by year but can make up a significant fraction of sales, even 20%. But the Titan has always had a drivetrain issue, nothing wrong per se, but something was and still is missing.

The Nissan Titan has never offered a base V6 work truck spec. Consequently, the Titan is, for the most part, unaffected by fleet sales. For instance, Ford sold 653,957 F-150s last year, but even with fleet sales, hundreds of thousands went into the hands of private individuals. On the other hand, Nissan’s full-size truck was far, far below that.

GoodCarBadCar reports that just 15,064 Nissan Titans were sold in 2022. It’s a year-over-year decline of 45%.

Ram ProMaster City

What happened to that Italian-designed, Turkish-built work van? That’s right, Ram’s van isn’t American. The only Star-Spangled thing about it is the passenger-to-work van conversion it gets statewide after import. The ProMaster City is actually a Fiat Doblò given a “Yankee Doodle” makeover in a factory in Bursa, Turkey. All that Stellantis-inspired automotive cross-pollination, though, made a good work van.

The masses thought it was a decent way to make a blue-collar living, as 15,914 were bought in 2022. And it experienced increased annual sales, up 9% from 2021 to 2022.

Nissan Titan vs. Ram ProMaster City

There has to be a reason why a multinational people carrier outsold a full-size truck in America. People are using these things to work, right? It could be that the ProMaster City can “get the job done” and “be ahead of the pack,” as Ram says in their cunning advertisements.

Disregarding a couple of cubic feet for the wheel wells, the bed in the top-of-the-line Platinum Reserve is roughly 49 cubic feet. The ProMaster City has an internal cargo capacity of 131.7 feet. While things can be stacked on top of each other in a truck bed, to achieve the same volume, items would have to be stacked to the top of the roofline. Nissan truck operators would need to cover or strap everything down; Ram van owners just need to shut the back barn doors.

But there’s no way a little work van can carry the weight a full-size pickup truck can, right? Wrong—the ProMaster City can. Surprisingly, the Ram ProMaster City has a higher payload capacity than the Nissan Titan.

The van can carry 1,900 pounds, whereas the Titan can only manage 1,697 pounds at most, depending on the cab configuration. There are also dozens and dozens of “Upfit” kits offered by Ram for the utilitarian van. But the Nissan Titan only has clever bed storage to offer. It’s a shame, for all those who wanted an American-made truck, the Titan is one of the most homegrown of the segment.